Friday, June 17, 2005

The Manx EU Reporter, or forget Sandhurst, this is a security risk

This venerable publication is as all of my readers in the vicinity of Douglass will know completely fictitious. Until yesterday afternoon it existed precisely nowhere. However it came into being through the fertile imagination of Dick Horsnell. Dick decided that coming over to Brussels to lobby the Council on behalf of the People’s No campaign. However, as a member of the public he couldn’t go in, only journalists have access. I happened to be in the accreditation department when I saw him, “Have you come to bail me out” he asked as the officiocrats had blocked his access. No, but promised to get somebody to help. So he invented “The Manx EU Reporter”, to which we added a motto, “All three feet on the ground”, and we got somebody to fax the officials a bogus editors note. In he swanned, big grin on face. Later he managed to get Neil Herron, Colin Moran and Chris Gill passes as further correspondents of this rag. The three of them were unsearched and had full access to the press conferences where 25 heads of Government were sitting. I saw camera crews wandering in and out, not putting their camera’s through the x-ray machines. Remember what happened to the Lion of the Panshir on 09/09?